Shallow Bowl with Lustre Decoration

POT 1686

Shallow Bowl with Lustre Decoration

POT 1686

Iraq

9th century AD

pink-bodied earthenware, with an opaque white glaze, decorated in greenish and brown lustre

7 x 17.8cm

The decorative motifs resemble those on the lustre-painted tiles in the Great Mosque of Kairouan in Tunisia (datable circa 860), which were most probably sent as a gift from Iraq to the Abbasid governor of Tunisia. Significantly, one of the Islamic glass dishes from the Famensi pagoda in Shaanxi province in China (sealed in 874) is painted in lustre with a similar design.